Google Business Profiles, the successor to “Google My Business,” is Google’s way for businesses like yours to manage your own information as displayed by Google.

The problem is that “managing own information” is not always easy. And sometimes it’s impossible without support from Google. By “support,” I don’t mean endless help articles or obscure and obsolete forum threads. I mean an actual person who can take action on your behalf. Example: One of our clients recently changed their address. We spent months using Google Business Profile to update to the new address. For some reason Google wouldn’t make the change, even after going through verification of the address by mail delivery. I also logged into my personal Google account, which I use to “suggest” edits to business listings, and notified Google that way that the address they were showing was wrong. No luck. Google would perpetually show the old address to searchers. Within the management dashboard, they would show that old address with a line through it and the new address underneath. Yet they still would not approve the listing. For several years — in fact until recently — there was really no recourse in a situation like this, because Google didn’t offer telephone support for Google Business Profiles. Now however, you can get a human representative on the phone. But it’s not obvious how to do it.

Here’s how we got a live Google rep to help us with our client’s business profile

Start with this Google help article: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3039617 Scroll to the bottom of the page. If you’re not logged into the Google account you use to manage your business profile, you’ll see a notice like this one:

Otherwise, you’ll see these options:

Click on the one that says Contact Us, and you’re on your way.

  As you work your way through the “Next” buttons, Google will gather information about your problem. They want to try and funnel you towards help documents if at all possible.     Almost there! Just fill in a bunch of form fields, and then wait for the phone call. The last few times I’ve requested a support call from Google, it’s occurred within minutes of submitting this next form.